Public information indictments thrown out

from Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas:

A state district judge threw out the indictment against Texas State Jail Standards Commission Executive Director Adan Munoz, saying wording in the criminal charge for allegedly releasing confidential information was “too vague.” It is unclear what action, if any, local prosecutors might take in moving forward for a possible new indictment or public apology. Munoz had been accused of improperly releasing information to two Corpus Christi reporters in response to a Texas Public Information Act request.

Read more here.

Cameron County (Tx.) District Attorney’s Office declines to pursue San Benito FOI issue

from The Brownsville Herald:

The Cameron County District Attorney’s Office has refused to prosecute a case filed by the Valley Morning Star accusing San Benito officials of violating the Texas Open Meetings Act, officials said last week.

The Star filed the complaint in April accusing city commissioners of failing to disclose the nature of a discussion they held in a closed meeting on April 12.

The newspaper also accused the city of illegally posting the meeting’s agenda, which failed to state the nature of the discussion commissioners planned to hold in executive session.

“The District Attorney’s Office received this case and reviewed it,” Assistant District Attorney Charles Mattingly said in an e-mail. “After evaluation, it was determined that the case was without merit. Therefore, the DA’s Office declined to prosecute.”

[...]

The decision riled Joel White, an Austin attorney with the Texas Freedom of Information Foundation.

“I saw it as a blatant violation of the Open Meetings Act,” White said in an interview. “I’m not surprised that the DA chose not to prosecute. DAs like to work on violent crimes and they don’t like to prosecute elected officials.”

Read more here.

Open meetings law threat or guard to free speech rights?

from the Austin American-Statesman:

Seventeen elected officials and four Texas cities, including Pflugerville, have asked a federal judge to scrap the state's Open Meetings Act, arguing that their free speech rights trump the law that requires most government business to be conducted in public.

The officials say the Texas law stifles "uninhibited, robust and wide-open" debate on public issues — the opposite effect intended by the U.S. Constitution's free-speech protection. They say they should not have to forfeit their First Amendment freedoms when taking public office.

But in a case that raises concern in other states with open-government laws, defenders of the Open Meetings Act say the case should be thrown out because the officials are seeking to protect secret speech, not free speech.

"The First Amendment protects citizens against government oppression — not government against citizen oversight," Texas Solicitor General James Ho wrote in legal briefs. "Openness in government is a First Amendment virtue, not a First Amendment violation."

Read the rest here.

University of Texas Withholds Tax Docs, While Texas A&M Makes them Public

The University of Texas System, comprised of 15 academic and health campuses, is withholding its annual tax return filings pending a ruling of the Texas attorney general's office and an IRS audit of the system. In contrast, the Texas A&M University System says its tax return is a public record under state law, despite also being the focus of an IRS audit.

For more on these requests, click here.

Diverse Groups Press Texas Energy Company for Increased Disclosure

As Austin, Texas, seeks to get 30 percent of its power from renewable energy sources by 2020, big industrials, environmental activists, and civic watchdogs find themselves agreeing on another goal - increased disclosure from Austin Energy.

The groups point to a $2.3 billion deal for a wood waste plant, a deal signed two years ago without much public scrutiny or input. Austin Energy officials have acknowledged they mishandled public debate over the wood waste plant, which did not begin until the City Council voted to sign the contract.

Austin Energy says it is reviewing its information with an eye toward increased disclosure without compromising its confidential information.

Read more details here.

Dash Cam Catches Police Excessive Force Incident

A Texan car dealer is suing the Carrollton police department after he was roughed up in a parking lot. The dealer, Shomari Staten, obtained the video through an open records request. The incident was caught on the squad dash cam.

Watch the video here.

Texas City Sued for Violating Open Meetings Act

Citizens of Big Spring, Texas, and the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, the NFOIC are suing the city for violating the Texas Open Meetings Act for meeting on January 6th to discuss a petition for a tax rollback election without proper notice to the public.

The Concerned Citizens Council of Big Spring-Howard County and the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas hopes the lawsuit sends the message to all city governments that no one is above the law.

Read more here.

Open Government Foes Argue Freedom of Speech is Protected Best by Secrecy

Three Texas cities and the Texas Municipal League have endorsed a legal challenge to Texas' Open Meetings Act, claiming the law unconstitutionally restricts their freedom of speech. The Texas Municipal League also passed a resolution to support changes that would lessen the penalties for violations of the open meetings act.

Critics point out, of course, that government officials enjoy freedom of speech under the state law, but simply must say it in front of the public at an open meeting when they are part of a quorum of a governmental body.

Click here for more.

Texas Cities to Challenge State Law Requiring Open Government Meetings

Texas cities Pflugerville and Rockport as well as council members from 18 others will challenge the state law requiring open government meetings in a lawsuit to be filed in federal court in Pecos before the end of the year.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a similar lawsuit on the grounds that former Alpine council members lacked standing to sue.

Get more here.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Lags Behind Technology

Click here for more on The Texas Tribune's difficulties in getting a FOIA request filed with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.   It seems the office won't accept requests electronically and by fax only in case of an "emergency," leaving open who says it's an emergency and what such an emergency is.  

Take Two - Texas Public Officials Will Try to Challenge Texan Open Meetings Act

At least 20 Texas public officials are expected to file a suit in federal court in the West Texas city of Pecos, asserting the state's Open Meetings Act violates their right to free speech.  

The open meetings act prevents a quorum of government officials from deliberating in secret and carries a penalty of up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a similar lawsuit for lack of standing as the plaintiffs were no longer in office.  The  attorney for the anticipated suit says they've cured the standing problem because the 20 officials who will be plaintiffs are current public officials.

Get more info here. 

They Say He's the Most Secretive Texas Governor (Hint: It's Not George Bush)

Texas Governor Rick Perry is being called the most secretive modern-day governor Texas has seen.  

The Dallas Morning News reports on Perry's latest public records squabble -- his refusal to release documents he reviewed before the July 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.   Perry has also fought to keep his itinerary private under the guise of security concerns and has his staff on a tight document retention schedule wherein e-mails are destroyed every seven days. 

For more on the Willingham case and its political implications for Perry, click here.  

Galveston Community Organizer Seeks to Change City Government Form

Galveston community activist David Stanowski is starting the Galveston Open Government Project to ferret out corruption at the city manager level.  Stanowski also wants to change the city's form of government from a city manager form to a mayoral form of government.  Stanowski is soliciting funding from community members as well as national foundations and organizations.

Click here for more information. 

What Did the Austin School District Want in a New Superintendent?

Answers can be found in documents and notes produced pursuant to the Texas Public Information Act. While state law allows school districts to withhold superintendent candidate names, the Texas Attorney General said Austin could not withhold records by arguing that the documents would lead to a candidate's identification.

The Austin American-Statesman reports that, as of July 2009, the school district had spent $20,000 trying to keep the documents private, arguing that secrecy was necessary to preserve the district's ability to conduct superintendent searches that would "attract the maximum number of good candidates."

More here.

Birth Dates Battle at the Texas Supreme Court

The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding whether the birth dates of approximately 145,000 state workers are public records. The case stems from a 2005 request from The Dallas Morning News for an updated state payroll database. The Texas Comptroller refused to provide the birth dates for the state workers, arguing the release of birth dates could lead to identity theft. Open records advocates note that such information is available from other public records, including voter registration polls.

The case is Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts vs. Attorney General of Texas and The Dallas Morning News. For more information, click here.

Open Meetings Law Stands in Fifth Circuit

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Dallas (Fifth Circuit) dismissed as moot a challenge to the Texas Open Meetings Act, holding that the plaintiff lacked proper standing to sue. In the case, former city council members had asserted the law violated their rights to exchange e-mail messages discussing city business in secret.

For more on the procedural history of the case and the dissenting opinion of judge James L. Dennis, please see the article from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Court decides to rehear Texas open meetings law case

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans will hear a case on the constitutionality of the Texas Open Meetings Act that was previously decided by a three-judge court panel, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reported. The ruling in Rangra v. Brown essentially said that the open meetings law was in conflict with elected officials' freedom of speech because the law made it a crime for a quorum of them to discuss government business outside of public meetings. Several friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed on behalf of the Texas Attorney General's office, which asked for the reconsideration.

A federal appellate court rightly decided this week to re-hear a case on the constitutionality of the Texas Open Meetings Act.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans (5th Cir.) took the unusual and laudable step of granting a petition for en banc review, meaning the full court will now consider a case that a three-judge panel of the court previously decided.

The Texas Attorney General’s office asked the court to reconsider its previous ruling in Rangra v. Brown, which said the Open Meetings Act infringed on elected officials' free speech rights by making it a crime for a quorum of them to discuss government business outside of a public meeting.

More here.

NFOIC Summit: Civics education

Katherine Garner, president of KLGarner Consulting and NFOIC treasurer; Mary Jo McGuire, Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership faculty at College of St. Catherine; and Barbara Peterson, president of Florida First Amendment Foundation, spoke about the crisis of civics education. Tom O'Hara, adviser of The Latern at Ohio State University moderated. Here are the notes from their NFOIC Summit session:

• Schools are not teaching civics or not teaching it as properly or fun as it could be taught. This crisis is real. Check out Richard Dreyfuss' initiative on bringing civics back into schools here.
• Children are not understanding the importance of Americans' freedoms. Democracy must be reborn in each generation.
• The original reason for schools in this country was to teach people how to be good citizens.
• For a democracy, citizens need knowledge, skills and inspiration. These skills include critical thinking, civil conversations, problem-solving, knowing how to vote, etc.
• Some education models dismiss government. Therefore, young people don't understand how the political system works, McGuire explained. The people most likely to be affected by the government -- with the Iraq war, housing and health care -- are the least likely to be prepared to speak out.
  
• No Child Left Behind focuses on language arts and math. If the subject isn't tested, it isn't taught.
• Garner discussed how difficult it was to get K-12 teachers in Texas to teach a First Amendment curriculum. When she asked why they didn't teach it, one said it was too controversial. If you teach students they have a freedom of speech and press, they use it.
• Garner spoke about the Light of Day project which connects Texas university students. They pick an investigatory topic and make FOIA requests across the state. The students use the data to write localized stories that are published by area newspapers. The first year, the students investigated how the Cleary Act was being used on college campuses. They found that most campuses were under reporting crime and not classifying date rapes as a crime. After their stories, Southern Methodist University changed the way it reports campus date rape and decided to start sending out campus alerts after date rapes. Students uncovered University of Texas at Dallas had private off-campus apartments for international students that had toxic mold and was ripe with crime. A week after the story, the administration created a committee to study the problem. Within a month, the apartment managing company had been fired and 16 new police officers were hired.
  
• Light of Day students have also studied taser reviews, which led to legislative bills to put a moratorium on them until more research could be done, and academic evaluations of university presidents, provosts and deans.
• Texas also struggled to explain what would happen if there were no FOIA laws. The blackout book was created by taking front pages of metro sections around the state and removing all stories, photos, infographics, etc. that were based on open meetings or open records laws.
• Peterson said the lack of civics education frightens her. A Florida first-term legislator introduced a bill that would make names of elected school board members anonymous.
• Peterson worked with a group of Florida young adults who had grown up in the foster care system. They testified at public hearings because they didn't have access to their own records, including their own SSN and previous home addresses. They helped get legislation passed that allowed children who had aged out of foster care access to their own records. Their involvement energized them and politicized them.
• Florida First Amendment Foundation created a training video for middle and high school students. The group is currently working on a corresponding curriculum for teachers. View the video here.
  

Resources:

• Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools
  
• CIRCLE: The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
• Minnesota Civic Education Matters
• Center for Civic Education
• Center on Congress -- For Kids
• National Conference of State Legislatures
• U.S. Courts Educational Outreach
  

Dallas City Hall to purge e-mails after 90 days

Dallas City Hall's new policy to retain electronic communication for only 90 days is disappointing to open-records advocates who realize that it's sometimes a year or more before an issue arises, The Dallas Morning News reported. At that point, there will be no records. City officials say the policy is to help save storage space.

Dallas City Hall soon will begin purging from its computer servers many e-mails 90 days or older - a policy city officials say will save precious storage space but one some open-government advocates fear will hamper transparency.

For years, Dallas has lacked a clear document retention policy governing electronic communications.

The new 90-day e-mail policy will also help the city methodically and responsibly cull what's become a massive amount of information stored on its central computer servers, City Secretary Deborah Watkins said.

More here.

Legislature overturns ruling, keeps travel details secret

The Texas Legislature voted to overturn the ruling by the Third Court of Appeals that travel records for the governor's security detail should be released to newspapers, the Houston Chronicle reported. Sen. Jeff Wentworth said releasing the records could compromise security. Someone who wanted to harm a public official could find out how many bodyguards travel with Gov. Perry, where they stay and whether or not they travel in advance of the governor, he told the Chronicle. A costs summary for the security detail can, however, be disclosed.

The state House and Senate voted Sunday night to restrict access to travel vouchers for the security details that travel with the governor and other top elected officials, days after an appeals court ruled that the records should be turned over to Texas newspapers.

Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, said the provision would overturn an appeals court ruling last week that said the records should be disclosed to newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, which sued to obtain the records.

The Senate had passed a bill to exempt the records from public disclosure, but Wentworth said the bill got “stuck in the House.” So lawmakers in both chambers voted, without opposition, to add the language to another public records bill.

More here.